In Mexico mission, PEN speaks for a silenced press

The leading American author Russell Banks
set the tone on Sunday
as he stood among international writers and their local colleagues in Mexico
City: "A nation's journalists and writers, like its poets and story-tellers,
are the eyes, ears, and mouths of the people. When journalists cannot freely
speak of what they see and hear of the reality that surrounds them, the people
cannot see, hear, or speak it either." Banks is among the leaders of a
high-level PEN International
delegation that is meeting with top Mexican officials to pressure them to
improve law enforcement in the murders of journalists, and to change the law to
bring more cases under the federal government's jurisdiction.

Mexican journalists are being killed
at a terrible rate. Since December 2006, 43 journalists have been murdered or
disappeared. In 13 of those cases, CPJ has established a clear connection between
the victim's journalism and their murder. The actual number may be higher. Often,
it appears that those responsible for the murders are members of organized
crime cartels that want to silence press coverage of what they are doing. In
many cases, the murders come as organized groups take over a town or a region
and move to control the press there. Sometimes, the bodies are found with notes
from organized crime groups taking credit. The consequence of the murders--aside from the
personal tragedies for the families--is that in a large and growing part of
Mexico the press has simply stopped operating as journalists. Newspapers, radio,
and TV are terrified to cover stories about crime and corruption because of
threats from the cartels. These gangs, having taken over whole regions by
corrupting civilian and police authorities, are making money through a vast network
of criminal activities, from drug dealing to extortion.

This is what Banks was talking about: The press in these
areas must now be blind and deaf, and so then is the public. Shortly after he
spoke to the roughly 40 writers and journalists, Elena Poniatowska, the
renowned Mexican author and journalist, put into a few words what it means to
be a journalist in Mexico: "In Mexico, to tell the truth is to put your life on
the line."

Those two speakers put the problem well. But now there are
two questions. First, how
did things get this way? And then, what
can be done? Both questions
trace back to the federal government. It has not been able to effectively stop
criminal cartels from invading and occupying large sections of the country,
which means that the public and the journalists there are pretty much without
protection, day to day. Then when a journalist is threatened, the federal
government has not been able to safeguard them; or if they are killed, it has
not been able to solve the case and punish the killers. In other words, there
is impunity for threatening or killing journalists.

PEN hopes to eat away at that by undertaking an international
campaign featuring famous writers, an effort designed to embarrass Mexico into
doing more. The pressure began last Friday with a full
page ad in a major national newspaper, El Universal, in support of Mexican journalists and writers. It
was signed by 170 leading international writers, including winners
of the Nobel Prize. It came on the day that the PEN delegation was meeting with
the Mexican attorney general and the president of the Senate. There are other similar meetings set for this
week, according to delegation officials.

John Ralston Saul, a Canadian author, is president of PEN
International. He said the report on the mission will go out to PEN's more than
100 chapters around the world. He didn't use the word "warning" to describe how
the group handled meetings with Mexican officials. Rather, he used the words,
"cordial" and "polite." But PEN's warning to Mexico was hanging in the air. He
told CPJ: "We stand in solidarity with our people, the people of the word. We
are saying if you don't do better, this is going to be a worldwide issue."

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